Since the 1990s, scholars from the fields of history and language participating in the interdisciplinary project "Nomen et Gens" have studied early medieval personal names in Europe. Core of the Project is a database concerning the onomastics and prosopography of the continental European barbarian kingdoms during long late Antiquity ca. 300–800 AD. The data was collected in the context of a project funded by the DFG and is currently being evaluated and offered to the public. Currently, about 10.000 name records are available online at www.neg.uni-tuebingen.de. This paper introduces the project, the current state of work and the data base; it also discusses problems of interdisciplinary cooperation especially concerning the lemmatisation of personal names.]

Dieser Artikel beschreibt einen neuen angewandten epistemologischen Aspekt der sogenannten Konvergenztheorie, die eine Homogenisierung der unterschiedlichen Ansätze auf dem Gebiet der indoeuropäischen Linguistik anstrebt. Es wird versucht, anhand von Ortsnamen in Verbindung mit der Wurzel *alb- und den semantischen Bedeutungsverschiebungen über Jahrhunderte ein europäisches und italienisches "Makro-Gebiet" (bzw. "Mikro- Gebiet") zu rekonstruieren. Es scheint, dass Paleo-Ligurische Ortsnamen wie Alba, alteuropäische Flussnamen wie Albis und ihre ablautenden Formen Olb- (> Orb- im Romanisch-Ligurischen) nicht direkt auf das Proto-Indoeuropäische Adjektiv *albho-, ‘weiß’ zurückgehen, sondern auf die weitere Prä-proto-Indoeuropäische Wurzel *Hal-bh-, ‘Wasser’, verwandt mit dem Sumerischen ḫalbia (> Akkadisch ḫalpium, ‘Quelle’, ‘Brunnen’, ‘Wassermassen’, ‘Wasserloch’). Eine weitere Analyse von *Hal-bh- führt zum Vergleich mit der Proto-Indoeuropäischen Wurzel *Hal-, ‘ernähren’. Das Proto-Indoeuropäische Suffix *HwaH-r-, ‘Wasser’, weist eine ähnliche Verbreitung auf.

In 2012, Namn och bygd, which is considered to be the world’s oldest specialised journal for place-name research, is publishing its one-hundredth issue. In this essay, the author attempts a survey of key aspects of the journal, and changes affecting it, since 1913. This includes comments on its aims, its editors and associate editors, contributing authors from different academic disciplines, contacts with other countries within and beyond the Nordic region, different sections of the journal and, of course, the scholarly content of Namn och bygd over the hundred years of its history.

Work is in progress to create an Atlas of Lower Sorbian Surnames with approximately 70 colered name cards on the basis of circa 63.000 records of names taken from sources of the 14. to 18. century. The cards will include the surnames which developed from Slavic composita as well as from their contracted and/or affectionate forms, and in addition surnames derived from occupational names and official titles, and from nicknames and ethnonyms. A few cards will be dedicated to anthroponymic suffixes as well as to combined areals. Every card will have a commentary to verbally describe the geographical distribution of the names. Statistical data concerning the number of diverse names as well as bearers of the names provide information about the productivity of each anthroponymic basis, and in addition, their occurrence in deanthroponymic place names in Lower Lusatia will be included. The submitted paper presents an introduction to the subject, goal, method and initial results of our research to date. As an example, four colered cards illustrate the territorial distribution of 68 diverse surnames and two suffixes.

Heretofore unknown and misinterpreted Sorbian surnames. In the first part of the article 38 previously unknown surnames found in archival sources in Upper Lusatia which were not taken into consideration earlier are explained. These include 1586 Tradell, Old Upper Sorbian *Tradula < *Stradula, to Proto-Slavic *stradati ‘to starve, suffer a shortage’, 1598 Twur, Old Upper Sorbian *Twoŕ < twoŕ , to Upper Sorbian tchor, Proto-Slavic *dъchorь ‘fitchew’, among others. They are also of special significance for the history of the Sorbian language. In the second part, upon critical perusal of the “Historical- etymological Dictionary” of “Studies of Sorbian Personal Names”, 104 names (1,3%) among the various 8.171 names listed, are rendered a new interpretation. These include for example 1568 Schorad, an old apotropaic name, 1422 Lemisch, an occupational nickname for the maker of plowshares. Several surnames are derived from place names, among them 1575 Zschygeran. In occasional instances a new interpretation resulted for the respective place name.

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This text contains a comparative evaluation of street names of the urban periphery. Starting with Erfurt, street names of other Thuringian and German cities of the late Middle Ages and the early modern period are examined. In doing so, different groups of people are contemplated, such as prostitutes, barber surgeons and knackers, whose appellatives finally found their way into street names. The focus is on accumulations of such names in certain areas of a city; differences between large and small cities are illustrated as well. In the end, the conclusion highlights the hitherto underutilised significance of these street names.

Where are the Lombards in the Italian Charters? Identity, Kinship and Name-giving. — Questions of identity, kinship and name-giving arise in the Italian charters of the early Middle Ages. Beginning in the 1990’s, the group “Nomen et Gens” has intensively engaged in the question of a relationship between ethnic identity and the choice of a personal name in Late Antiquity and in the Middle Ages. Owing to their nature the Italian private charters are a great source for a micro-history of personal names. Even if it is not always possible to determine that personal names are a marker of ethnic identity, the charters show that their historical significance is not only based on their ethnic relevance. The Lombard and Latin names give evidence to other forms of identity. The original private charters were entrenched in the place where they originated and they are therefore a source into inquiry of local identities. For instance, local features in personal names emerge in the comparison of the name of a bishop of Luni, Teudilascius (*theudho- + *laika-z), which is typical in Tuscanian charters, and the name Teudelais from Piacenza in the North of Italy. The Italian charters are “family charters” and this allows us to draw conclusions about name-giving. On the basis of the genealogy of Bishop Peredeo of Lucca this contribution analyses also the use of traditional forms of name-​giving (allitteration, repitition, variation) showing that such rules are applied not only to Lombard names but also to Latin-Christian names. Moreover, the semantics of Peredeo’s genealogy lead back to the vocation of his family. It is the vocation of a Lombard family to ecclesiastic power.

Development of Names and Name-Giving in Upper and Lower Classes in Early Ninth-Century Île-de-France. – This onomastic article about names and name giving intends to demonstrate possible cooperations between philologists and historians. The rich material of personal names in the polyptych of Saint-Germain-des-Prés near Paris from the early ninth century, on the one hand, allows an interesting philological analysis of the morphology, phonetics and lexicology of names in a region of previously intensive ‘Germanic’ and Gallo-Roman acculturation. On the other hand, it permits an analysis of different motives of name giving, particularly the familial transmission of names or of their elements to the children as well as the use of Christian names. It is further interesting to compare these peasant names with those of the upper classes. As a kind of test drilling, this article is based on an analysis of four fisci of the polyptych (Palaiseau, Villemeux, Villeneuve, Béconcelle), compared with the names of monks, donors and witnesses of the same period and region. Considering the processes that a language runs through in a situation of continuous bilinguism, the names reveal a broad spectrum of Romanization (phonetic and morphological assimilation) as well as of hybrid names with Germanic and Romance elements or suffixes, as far as forming new name elements by an etymologically ‘false’ segmentation. Although this development is generally observed in all social classes, certain phenomena, such as spirantization of stops, coupling Romance suffixes with Germanic elements, or the formation of names by constructing new elements, are much more common among the peasants. Concerning name giving, the whole spectrum of traditional forms of ‘inheriting’ the whole name of one parent or one element of both the paternal or maternal name (‘variation’), in various combinations, seems to be complemented by further forms, such as alliteration or ‘rhyme’, but also by using different, and new, kinds of variation, namely either slight phonetical variations of the same name or by using different, but phonetically similar lemmata. The ‘Romanized’ forms as a linguistic development are frequently integrated into this ‘system’ of name giving in order to differentiate between the namebearers. While a ‘Romanization’ of non- Romance names is well under way, the ‘Christianization’ of names is still in its initial stages. In the Paris area, ‘Christian’, particularly biblical names are more common among monks and clerics than among peasants, who, however, use the whole spectrum (biblical, ‘talking names’, names composed with Crist-, names of saints), frequently prefer variations of biblical names and combine them with other elements. From a functional and pragmatic perspective, Romance and Christian names are used like and adapted to names of etymologically Germanic origin, while the linguistic principles of name-formation are maintained and the Romance and Germanic onomastic morphology still coexist.

Esta pesquisa tem como objetivo estudar a importância dos nomes próprios (topônimos e corônimos) no discurso publicitário das estâncias hidrominerais para divulgar suas potencialidades turísticas. O topônimo utilizado pela indústria turística pode tornar-se o nome de um produto. Para estudar o discurso publicitário turístico e para analisar o topônimo como uma marca, pesquisamos a relação entre turismo, espaço e topônimo. Para essa análise, escolhemos a estância hidromineral Águas de São Pedro, localizada no estado de São Paulo. Realizamos pesquisa documental e de campo, entrevistando familiares do denominador, moradores, hoteleiros e turistas. Estudamos também o desenvolvimento histórico do lugar, suas denominações incluindo seus bairros, vilas, logradouros e suas motivações toponímicas. Através do estudo onomástico, levantamos nomes de corônimos como as denominações dos hotéis do município de Águas de São Pedro, seus atrativos turísticos e a relação entre os nomes dos hotéis com o nome da cidade. Portanto, por meio de estudos teóricos interdisciplinares, buscamos mostrar como o nome do lugar é tratado como marca no discurso publicitário turístico. / This research aims to study the importance of names (toponyms and coronyms) in advertising discourse of water spa resort or thermal cities to promote their tourism potential. The place name used by the tourism industry can become the name of a \"product\". To study the tourist advertising discourse and to anallyse the place name as a trademark, we studied the relationship between tourism, space and place name. For this analysis, we chose the water health resort of Águas de São Pedro, located in São Paulo. We conducted desk research and fieldwork, interviewing relatives of the denominator, residents, tourists and hoteliers. We studied also the historical development of the place, including the denomination of its neighborhoods, towns, places and its toponimical motivations. Through the onomastic study, we found coronyns, as the name of the hotels in the city of Águas de São Pedro, its tourist attractions and the relationship between the the hotels name and the city name. Therefore, through interdisciplinary theoretical studies, we show how the place-name is treated as \"trademark\" in tourist advertising discourse.